THE NEW YOR.KER. ily quarrelled over his property, and a mother sued a son. VI. KIYOSHI TANIMOTO O NE Sunday a little less than a year after the bombing, the Rev- erend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, draped a tent he owned over a badly damaged house he had managed to rent in the suburb of Ushida, and, though the roof stil1 leaked, he conducted services for a handful of former parishioners in its living room. Just then, this was all he was able to do. He was slowly recuperating from a severe siege of radiation sickness, and his mind still staggered from all that he had been through. At the moment of the explosion, he had been two miles from the hypoc n- ter, because he had been helping a friend to evacuate some belongings, in fear of an air raid, to the house of a rich man in the hilly suburb of Koi. Appalled by the extent of the ruins he could see from up there, he made his way into the burning center, thinking to get back to his home and church. Going past a silent procession of grue- somely bomb-burned and maimed citi- zens fleeing the city's fires, and past houses where people buried under wreckage were crying out for help, he apologized aloud, over and over, for the shame of being unhurt and of not stopping to help. By an astonishing chance, he met his wife, Chisa, carry- ing Koko, their eight-month-old daughter. Pressed down under the wreckage of the parsonage, Chisa had clawed an escape hole for the baby and herself, and she was now making her way to the home of friends in U shida. The couple parted as they had met, benumbed. Kiyoshi Tanimoto got as far as Asano Park, by the Kyo River, which was the evacuation point for the people of his neighborhood. There he began ministering to the wounded and the dying. With a basin in his hand, he gave water to the thirsty, who, though unspeakably injured, would raise themselves slightly and bow their thanks to him. Much of the time, he ferried sufferers across the river. Once, as he was lifting a burned vic- tim into the boat, he felt the skin slip off the flesh under his hands; the shock was so great that he had to sit down for a time to recover. He worked that way, with heroic fortitude, for five days and nights. Far enough from the bomb's hypo- center at the moment of the burst to escape a heavy dosage of radiation from it, he had nonetheless become con- taminated by his quick return to the saturated ruins and by having carried in his arms so many of the wound- ed and having moved so many corpses. In time, he came down with such a severe case of radiation sickness, with a fever of 104 for weeks on end, that his wife thought he was going to die. After two months in bed, he felt well enough to try to resume his ministry. 57 JUST ACROSS THE POND ON NEW BOND S OON after the Japanese surrender, SCAP-the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers for the Occupation and Control of Japan-had allocated releases of food for displaced Japanese, but the distribution system broke down. Kiyoshi Tanimoto took it on himself, weak as he was, to trundle a pushcart through the streets carrying American rations to the poor in his neighborhood. He also handed out, where they were needed, vitamin pills and saccharin that he began to receive from the United States-from fellow- alumni of the Candler School of The- ology at Emory University, in Geor- gia, which he had attended before the war. Gradually, Hiroshimans began to repossess the plots of rubble where their houses had stood. Many of them were building crude wooden huts, scavenging fallen tiles from ruins to make their roofs. There was no elec- tricity to light their shacks, and at dusk each evening, lonely, confused, and disillusioned, they gathered in an open area near the Y okogawa railroad station to deal in the black markets and to console each other. Into this zone now trooped, each evening, Kiyoshi Tanimoto and four other Protestant ministers and, with them, a trumpeter and a drummer tooting and thumping "Onward, Christian Soldiers." Tak- ing turns, the ministers stood on a box and preached. With so little to enter- tain them, a crowd always gathered, even including some panpan girls, as prostitutes who catered to G .I.s had come to be called. The anger of many hibakusha, directed at first against the Americans for dropping the bomb, had by now subtly modu- lated toward their own government, for having involved the country in a rash and doomed aggression. The preachers said that it was no use blam- ing the government; that the hope of the Japanese people lay in repenting their sinful past and relying on God: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these , , -.; ,';- : . ............'$: ,,-, , :. -:./: .:... ":::. ',', , . 'f " .. :::'" , ; ',,- -, .. "" I . .. .> #" , , ,'""::" :.. ',' *' .. ..',',. , : . <"f. : :..... .. . ': .-..,' 1: ..:::': <- .:., ,. .. Y ; y' .'':'., ; v'* , ' <: ...... ... ,;': .....:....".. .,:, .... .-t '.....\, ... ^", .';.:' : i: ? , . . ': : ",'.: : ' < 1 : .} ! J / : : :': ? ::.': : :v\::'. ..'.:: ' That's where you'll find us zn London And well worth the trip it is, to snuggle znto a Bzrger Christensen fur. Wé're the warJJWSt things to hit these shores since claret. BIRGER CHRISTENSEN 170 NEW BOND STREET LONDON WI 01-629-2211 Belgian Shoes THE ELLE for Her $17500 SHOE BROCHURE $1.00 ACCES90RIES BROCHURE $1 00 Belgian Shoes. 60 East 56th Street. 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